There is a second bridge in the Pond, and it is not the toad's.
The toad's bridge goes over the water to the fields. The rope bridge goes over the gorge to the next valley, and it is a long way down, and it is the only way across.
Bao went over it for the first time in the spring.
"You cannot take those," said the keeper at the near end, looking at her shells. “You won't be able to spend those over there."
"Then what do I take?"
"You take this." He opened a wooden box by his foot, and Bao counted her forty shells into it, and he wrote her a paper and handed it over. "There is a keeper at the far end. He reads the paper then he will give you their money."
Bao looked at the paper. Then she looked at the box.
"My shells are staying here."
"Your shells never go anywhere. Your shells have never been to the next valley in their lives." He shut the box. "That paper is worth forty shells for exactly as long as there are forty shells in this box."
Bao thought about that for most of the way across.
It is a long crossing. Two ropes to hold, two ropes to walk on, planks between them, and the gorge underneath doing what gorges do.
"Who checks it?" she asked Moolah, halfway.
"The beavers."
"All of it?"
Moolah did not answer straight away, which was answer enough, so Bao asked four more animals when she got home.
The beavers said they checked the planks. The keeper said he checked the first twenty paces, because that was the part he could see from his hut. An old goose said her father had checked the whole thing once, properly, every rope and every knot, and that had been a very long time ago and he had been thorough and he was dead.
Nobody had checked the middle in years.
The barrels get checked after every swap. The Book gets read back out loud every sundown by nine animals who do not like each other. The bridge gets looked at by whoever happens to be standing near it.
And everything that leaves the Pond goes over it.
Margin Note: The bridge is not the valley. The bridge is the bridge.
The Honest Bit: This is a cross-chain bridge, and it works just like the box. Your real coins stay locked up on one side and you carry a claim to the other, and that claim is worth something only while the locked coins are still there. The second half is the part that matters. Bridges hold enormous amounts and are examined far less carefully than the chains they join, which is why more money has been stolen from bridges than from almost anything else in crypto. Before you cross one, find out what is in the box and who has actually checked the ropes.
The Question of the Day: Bao's forty shells never left the Pond. Say what she was really carrying across the gorge, and what would have to happen for it to be worth nothing.
Try It: Pick any bridge into BNB Chain and find out two things. How much it is holding, and when it was last audited. If the second one is hard to find, that is worth knowing too.
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